The Whole Hog

My first day at the Country Cat, watching Adam Sappington butcher a whole hog, was probably one of my most memorable experiences at the restaurant. I came in a couple hours early because I didn’t know anyone and didn’t yet know how this restaurant operated. I was searching, even before the restaurant had opened, for this job. Freshly returned to Portland after ten years of loitering around the Americas I needed to recoup before I was ready for commitment. So I lived rent free in the basement of some wonderful friends, worked at a burger joint, and rode the bus to work. Until this opportunity surfaced.

I remembered when Wilwood opened in ’94. I had just graduated college and was hired at the Black Rabbit at McMenamin’s Edgefield 2 months after opening. I was 22 years old…the rest of the wait staff were well into their 30’s and very professional. The idea to butcher a whole hog was not yet in the culinary jargon back then…chefs were still sprinkling parsely around the rim of the plates! These veterans had been in the restaurant business for a long time, but the idea to go back to the farm traditions was just beginning.

The knowledge that filled that resturant astounded me and soaked into my young mind. In 1994 the Farm to Table phenomenon was new, and the thought to butcher a whole hog for a restaurant seemed a waste of resources. This was before Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential shocked the world and restaurants were merely places to eat, not places to revere, or eventually work.

“Butcher a whole hog,” my boss says,” or turn your back on what food is about. You have to go back to the basics and understand where your food comes from and how it gets to your plate. Before you butcher the whole hog, you have to understand how the animal is raised, slaughtered, and how it gets to your kitchen. Good food ain’t easy.” That last sentence sums up what humans have been diligently studying for many thousands of years: how to alter the chemical make up of food to maximize nutrition and taste.

I don’t know everything about the restaurant business, but I do know the benefits of being able to butcher a whole hog and how to use the whole animal. I know, from personal experience on my grandfather’s farm, that a farmer who loves his animals and treats them with respect will produce the best quality product. So come watch us butcher a whole hog at duckspoon.com